6x6

never just a car: a supercut of automotive movie cameos

blue state: an exhibit in Los Angles structured around colour examines the many ways of casting shade

india pale ale: find out what which beer you’re partial to says about you, via the ever-brilliant Nag on the Lake

le béton brût: with greyscale Lego bricks, a man and his son create miniature Brutalists architecture, via Present /&/ Correct

paleo-futures: 1926 interview with Nikola Tesla predicting our fraught relationship with our gadgets

midsweden 365: secret tunnels excavated in the granite mountains near the town of Gällö repurposed as a underground, year-round skiing range

toy building brick

A couple days ago, the world marked International LEGO Day, inscribed on the calendar on the date when Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed the American patent application for his product sixty years ago. GK Christiansen was the third son of the inventor and founder Ole Kirk Christiansen who began making wooden toys in his workshop in Billund, Denmark in 1932—before moving to plastic as a medium—and was the managing director of the company from 1950 to 1995. The company’s name and line of construction toys is from the Danish words leg godt—“play well.”

brick and mortar

Via the Daily Dot, we discover that Lego- compatible adhesive tape is on offer for pre-order and will be ready to ship sometime this summer, having far surpassed their original fund-raising goal multiple times over. Brilliantly any surface can be made Lego-friendly, enhancing building possibilities and seems to us a far better alternative to modifying and replacing components than some boring old 3D printer. Founded in 1934 in Denmark, the company’s name is a play on the Danish phrase leg godt—“play well.”

minifigs, hidden figures

NPR reports that some of the pioneering women of the US space agency will be celebrated in Lego form, thanks to the perseverance of science writer Maia Weinstock.
Meant to inspire a deeper inspection of the role of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM fields), the minifigs include Mae Jemison, the first African American astronaut, Nancy Grace Roman, chief astronomer behind the Hubble Space Telescope, Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and computer scientist Margaret Hamilton (who recently had her story told in the film Hidden Figures) who contributed significantly to the Apollo Moon landings.

seven points of articulation

Via the superb Dangerous Minds comes a look at the creations of one Etsy artisan, Glinda the Geek, and her adorable and necessary contribution to the universe of LEGO minfigs with the addition of characters from the British comedies The Young Ones and Absolutely Fabulous (plus many more at the artist’s stand).
I think that branching out is always laudable as sometimes I find the whole mainstream franchise a little grating as it seems to be only capitalising on some other popular movement and the tie-ins usually mean that one can only every play-out one very specific adventure (although the standard-issue repertoire of building-blocks can create pretty inspired tableaux as well)—as opposed to Sigmund Freud’s consulting-couch, also on offer from Glinda the Geek.

five-by-five

ncc-1701: gaming magnate designs headquarters in the likeness of the USS Enterprise

staple good: creative tailoring with flour-sacks

scultpture trail: photo gallery of some of the best and worst public art installations

land of a thousand dances: the Peanut Duck novelty song from circa 1965

playing with your food: edible, functional LEGO bricks from gelatin

wappenschmied or great seal

While researching something else entirely (and I hope they never manage to work up a deliver system that can filter out all things tangential and only present exactly what one was looking for), I can across this really neat, abstract—modern totem for the City of Frankfurt am Main in use during the years of the Weimar Republic between World War I and II. The constitutional convention of 1919 took up the standard of the city that had hosted the last attempt, some sixty years prior, in deference to those efforts to first unite the German peoples under a constitutional monarchy.

Those seminarians were overcome by war and political intrigues but the task was one worth repeating and the Reichsadler (not empire but rather the word suggests realms) of Frankfurt is reflected in the contemporary seal of the federal government and seen on government buildings. Frankfurt modified its symbols and coat-of-arms to distinguish itself from the central government, and while the vexillology passed down does look quite dignified and officious, this sort-lived alternative offers an interesting statement on anachronism, seeming almost tiki inspired and with the talons of a Lego minifig.